The last post covered good points in support of at least limiting access to, if not utterly phasing out, the bayonet. So what’s so wrong with all of those arguments? Let’s go straight to the heart and target the meaty bits.

Well-meaning warfighters need to let go of a few key misconceptions:

• Troops do not possess the maturity to use bayonets. If troops can’t be trusted with a dangerous object on the front of their weapons, then why do we give them weapons at all? Why do we give them machine guns, hand grenades, rocket launchers and licenses to drive Hummers, 7-ton trucks, and tanks? You would be hard-pressed to find someone who had been exposed to any of this dangerous equipment before being exposed to knives. Most military persons carried knives before enlisting. Most troops currently carry a pocket knife of some kind. With few exceptions, they are responsible with them. Anyone that can be trusted with a gun can be trusted with a knife.

• Professionals finish everything with the bullet. That doesn’t even always work for snipers who generally have the time to make a shot. Combat has never been clean and pretty. No matter how nice a technique (on an individual or battalion level) you’re starting with, it reduces to chaos on impact with someone else’s nice technique. Professionals know that there are no guarantees and reliance on anything complex comes with its own risks.

• The weapon becomes a hazard under common battlefield conditions. This argument is no more potent than suggesting that troops shouldn’t carry grenades because of the risk of the bearer being blown to bits, his ordnance rolling over and exploding in and among his unit. This is not a high probability (I’d love some data on this, however) and the potential gain of having grenades and bayonets makes the argument moot.

• Close combat is out of date and disappearing. The first archers thought that. The first riflemen thought that. The first machine gunners thought that. So long as someone is willing to sit in one spot and refuse to move unless you come and get him, there will always be close combat. Denying that fact serves only to reduce the tools available to the fighter who must dig him out.

• Spec ops aren’t using it. Few of the tools or techniques used by special operations apply to the life of the infantryman. Similarly, few tools or techniques used by the infantry will be used by special operations. The Marine Corps performs a different mission than the Army, the Navy or the Air Force. Each service has its own mission. Those missions may require similar skills and equipment but that similarity can sometimes be thin. For example, a special operator working in the jungles of Vietnam may not require the training necessary to take down an oil rig and vice versa. Much like each service, each spec ops unit also performs a role similar to but apart from other units and distinctly apart from the infantry. Using them as a comparison is not appropriate.

• The weapon is useless once it is in someone. That makes just as much sense as saying that a rifle is useless once it is out of ammunition. The solution is to reload the rifle. The solution for the bayonet is to pull it out. Both, when incorporated into training, become automatic transitions that are planned for rather than becoming awkward interruptions in action.

Professionals, It’s Good For You
Professionals in any field, war in particular, are founts of valuable experience. They often possess wisdom far beyond their grade or station and have a clear sense of what has been shown to work and what has not. Additionally, they have a strong affection for the troops who must follow their commands. They will wisely not commit their troops to activities that will unnecessarily endanger them… whatever else they may actually tell them.

Professionals are the backbone of any organization that is to exist long enough to tell its own story. Professionals, however, are occasionally their own worst enemies.

• When the gun was introduced to Japan, experienced leaders said that it was unprofessional, awkward to use and required little skill or bravery. They refused it.

• When American continental soldiers were introduced to the idea of fighting in small groups from behind rocks and trees rather than in rank and file on the open field, experienced leaders said that it was unprofessional, awkward to use and required little skill or bravery. They refused it.

Each of these circumstances are much more complicated than I’ve made them here and not all went as colloquial knowledge has us convinced (by all means, let’s talk about them sometime). The important message is that in each of these cases, the leaders were understandably reluctant to introduce a concept to their units because the units already functioned well and there was no guarantee that this new practice would improve on that.

Eventually, the experts relented when pressed by the circumstances of the battlefield. They recognized the benefit of what had been laid before them once they were able to see it used correctly. That said, in each of these cases, battles earlier on could have been won or been far less costly if an honest, unbiased analysis of the option had been considered.

Using the bayonet faces comparable reluctance, as it must re-earn its place each generation. The irony is that most professionals accept unarmed combat out of hand as a simple necessity. When the need to control a hostile but not lethally dangerous subject arises or when a conversation deteriorates to violence, they are thankful to have learned an arm bar take-down or a blood choke. They feel comfortable knowing that a good toe kick to the femoral artery will put the subject on the ground.

Bayonet training falls directly between these unarmed skills and standard shooting skills. If teaching shooting is okay, and teaching unarmed combat is okay, then what sense does it make not to issue, teach and utilize the bayonet in an equivalent integrated manner?

The MACE

The Right Time
So the question becomes, when should one use a bayonet? In no particular order, a few circumstances where a bayonet is ideal:
• When you are out of or about to be out of ammunition and do not have time or cover to reload.
• When you must temporarily mask the success of your ongoing attack with stealth.
• When your unit is in and among the enemy and firing your weapon may lead to fratricide.
• When you have just had a misfire at bayonet range.
• When rapidly closing with the enemy into an unfamiliar region of the battlespace.
• When repelling an assault that has gained your position.
• When instilling a dose of fear and shock may break the enemy’s will.
• When terrain dictates that engagement ranges will be closer than grenade range.
• In the natural chaos of the battlefield.

In addition, though emotionally challenging for the operator, it also lifts spirits, imbuing him with a visceral, inescapable thereness that, for some, is the reason they joined the armed services.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZoG8qNMn_0

The time to fix bayonets is not just as one of these occasions occurs. It must be done beforehand or it will be useless, its advantage wasted. During the Korean War, Captain Lewis Millett (US Army) had his infantry company keep bayonets fixed at all times, bluff charging targets with bayonets and machine guns while on patrol. This practice saved their lives during an ambush that should have wiped them out.

When the seat belt first became standard in cars, people only put them on when they thought that they were about to do something dangerous. As a result, people died frequently in car accidents who could have been saved by simply wearing the seat belt. It took making the wearing of seat belts a law for the real benefit of the device to be achieved. You cannot put on a seat belt only when you expect danger. It is almost always too late by then. And you cannot fix a bayonet when you expect the worst. It is also almost always too late.

“Fixing” It (get it?)
The current bayonet training system does not encourage creative techniques that could be realized through practical experimentation. With pugil sticks (the standard form that bayonet training takes in the military), the combatant does not fear the blade and tends only to attack with the butt of the weapon, which seems more devastating in training: comparable to a right hook plus.

Might want to turn down the volume for this.

These deficiencies harm the attacker-in-training who never learns to exploit opportunities and harms the defender-in-training who never learns to protect those vulnerabilities. It teaches aggression without technique, which is just as useless as teaching technique without aggression.

It is unfair and not a little arrogant to comment on these concerns without offering at least a few options to resolve it. What follows are just a few recommendations.

1) Do away with inaccurate pugil stick sparring and replace it with a more open form of fight training that can transition from the fixed weapon to unarmed grappling, permitting strikes from feet, hands, knees, and elbows. Pugil sticks in their current form are not effective bayonet trainers. They are ungainly and unnatural, giving the fighter the sense that a slender blade is that easy to see and, therefore, deflect. The diameter of the pugil stick is so wide that there is no chance of slipping past openings that present themselves.

2) Do away with stick trainers. The current stick trainer, a reasonable attempt to solve the problems just listed, does not permit the butt of the weapon to be safely used against the opponent. Again, it does not train in an ability that will be available with the real weapon. Rather, just as the upper receiver is replaced when using simmunitions, consider replacing the buttstock with a rigid pad similar to the legacy pugil stick or a martial arts strike surface. Such an option can also be placed over an existing buttstock, so long as it does not interfere with shouldering the weapon.

3) Implement a training/marking rifle that uses simmunitions and incorporates a marking bayonet system that lets the receiver feel something. Consider a reduced voltage drive stun EMD made to mount on the rifle trainer. Any savvy electronics tinkerer can whip one up in a weekend for about $20, to include a point, reverse edge, and belly. The goal is to allow the operator to use their own weapon in training. If I get the time, I may whip up and post a diagram of this on here.

4) Set a requirement that bayonets be fixed, at the very least, before entering a building as virtually all contact in a building can be considered close. This will affect future military assault rifle/bayonet integration and design. I have some thoughts. Come talk to me.

The rifle to replace the M-16 must take close combat into serious consideration. It can hardly be debated that future combat is moving farther from the farm and closer to the city. The defining characteristics of the urban environment are greatly reduced combat ranges (virtually all contact within grenade range) and reduced support (in the form of friendly units and resupply). This leaves the warfighter in small groups and often performing combat tasks individually. An individual must be able to employ a bevy of options, down the most direct, in order to preserve their own life.

The Irrational
Not using a bayonet when you have a rifle is like not using infantry when you have aircraft. It is like choosing not to use the military at all when you have nuclear missiles. Just because there exists a weapon that trumps yours does not mean that there is always a circumstance conducive to its use.

Yes, the bayonet charge is suicide in the face of a machine gun. But it is not for the machine gun that the bayonet should continue to exist. The warrior, regardless of era, must at some point close with the enemy. A mechanical device, a cumbersome device, or other weapon may fail, be lost, or simply be impractical… other than ideal under the unforeseen conditions of the battlefield.

A pilot carries a sidearm, though he may never need it. A tank crew carries the same fire power as a fire team, independent of the tank itself. An individual warfighter on the ground is far more likely to need such insurance than the pilot or the tank driver.

America has lost two wars (arguments come), both of them to close fighters. Our response to that cannot continue to be backing away. We must embrace close fighting and be better at it than the enemy. After WWII, we did not run from Auftragstaktik (literally “Mission Tactics,” which involved reducing tactical oversight by giving junior leaders the commander’s intent rather than explain how do what he wanted). We embraced it. We did this because we recognized that it worked for the German army. We must do the same here.
The mission of the fire team is:

“…to locate, close with and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver and to repel the enemy’s assault by fire and close combat.”

See? It’s right there in the job description.

Welcome to The Far Side
-Concept Gregg